Shadows on the Moon
by Sparrow Windsinger
Summary: Shadows on the moon is a three part story, set in Zelgadis' early life and transformation. It sorta got taken out of the Slayers 'verse and into America. It's set in Chesapeake, Maryland.


Blue River  
  
Zelgadis trudges along through the park to Blue River high, Chesapeake, Maryland, squinting as stray sunbeams hit him in the eyes. His sister, who goes to the same the school as him (although four years above him) goes the opposite direction on her bike, as there is no bike track in the park. He finally reaches the school, perfectly on time as always, and jogs through the wrought iron gates and into the main complex. He goes through the familiar corridors to the main hall to assembly. He goes and stands in his usual place next to the window two rows from the front. The principal, Maria Vanilj, stands up in front of the assembled school, and starts her usual pep talk. Then, at the end of the talk when normally she would tell them all to go their classes, she raises her voice a little. "And finally, I have two connected announcements to make." _Just like a Scandinavian to tell us that they're connected_ thinks Zelgadis. "Cory Graham, the IT professor, retired halfway through the summer holidays." There was quite a bit of mute cheering from the IT students, Zel's sister included. "We do, however, have a new IT professor." A few people roll their eyes, but most look interested at the hope of having an interesting teacher, even though virtually every other time they had been disappointed. "He is a professional computer scientist, and twenty-eight years old. His name is Sari Brynzeel." There is a little smattered clapping, which turns into full blown applause as Sari Brynzeel walks up to Maria Vanilj and smiles a toothpaste grin that shows all of his gleaming white teeth, especially his almost werewolf-like canines. His skin is light grey, his hair black and reaching his jaw. He wears all black, with dark grey armour. He must be above six feet tall. Maria smiles her half smile, which is as much as you're likely to get from her, and turns back to the class. "Now all go to your classes, and those of you who take IT will see Sari later today." The assembly breaks up, and they all go to their separate classes. Zel sits through Politics, Modern literature, History of magic, English, Maths, and General History. All very boring, although there are a few amusing things that happen in History of magic. Politics is really off the ball, the one word that is never mentioned is power. And all that Politics consist of is power. Modern literature is utterly pointless, as nobody really cares about it anyway. English and maths are both very normal, although all you really need is the GCSE for them and then you can forget them both. Zel walks out to the playground where the older and middle students tend to go to eat lunch. He stretches out under a tree and unpacks his lunch. He is brooding about General history and contemplating how they are actually allowed to teach such drivel. He hears a rustle to his right, and looks up. A girl with long, straight, mousey hair sits down and opens her lunch bag. "Hi Karis-chan." "Yo." "What have you got next?" "Same as you. Magic in practice." "After that?" "I would have RE, but I talked to Vanilj-San and Kurai-Sensei, he teaches RE by the way, and I'm going to skip that and talk to the timetable people about taking IT instead of RE. And after that I've got PE, science, and specialist magic." "Cool." "What have you got after Magic in practice?" "I signed up for Specialist Skills classes instead of RE, and then I've got PE, same as you, and an hour of Netball lessons. I didn't want to take science." Karis nods, and eats another piece of Sushi. "What's the storm cloud for? You looked really angry when I came up to you." "I was wondering at the actual objective of General History. I mean, History of Magic is all right, because the stuff there is really arcane. Like, the Shaburanigdu legend, and The Elves and all that, but General history is all dates and famous names. It's pathetic really. You could get as much from listening to a conversation in a cheap inn." Karis snorts, and takes out some nougat. "What's your Specialist Skills for?" "Swordplay. What's your specialist magic?" "Well... last term in History of magic they were talking loads about the elves, and their skills and things. And... Have you ever heard of the Lost Powers?" "My Grandpa has said some stuff about it, but as the name implies, the Powers are Lost." "Yeah... They said that Elves did it by channelling Ether. I copied the entire lesson onto a tape recorder, and, well, I reckon I could do it." Zel stares open mouthed. "Cast the Lost Powers?!" "Yeah. There's an after school thing in the South Building, and apparently about three people are taking it, two final year people and me. It's about trying to channel Ether. It doesn't say anything about the Lost Powers in the leaflet, it's supposed to be Black Magic stuff about getting into the astral side. But Ether is the only thing that can cast the Lost Powers, so I'm going to use it to try out some Elvish magic." "But you don't know any of the chants." "I do. I got some off the Internet. Photos of the original manuscripts, in elvish, and the translation. It's an illegal site, but I printed off every page on the site and I've got them all in my bag." Zelgadis shakes his head and turns back to his sandwiches. There is a shout from across the lawn, and a pink-blond haired male jogs across to Karis. "Karis-chan! Zel-kun! I found you finally, freude!!" "Ossu Josah-Kun!" Karis stands up and walks over to him. "Hi Josah-kun. Come to take Karis to her lesson?" "No. I came to tell her that I've already spoken to Vanilj about changing Karis' timetable, and she can take IT." "Hooray!" Karis dances around waving her arms. "And also to tell her and you that Magic in practice starts in five minutes." Zel cries out, grabs his bag and runs after Karis and Josah.  
  
***  
  
Darens, the magic in practice teacher, pairs them all up to their duelling partners and then walks around the pairs, giving advice and instruction. Karis is paired with a final year morphlogist, Josah with a second grader, and Zelgadis with Karis' friend, Gemini. The duels are free, all types of magic included, and physical contact when needed. As Darens said, in the real world magic duels are not just standing around exchanging spells. Josah is not having a good time, as he is a fourth grader and much better than the second grader his is fighting. He automatically chants a fireball, and Darens spots him just in time as the second grader shuts his eyes and tries to maintain a faltering raywing, levitates a few inches off the ground, and then his spell disapears suddenly in a burst of flickering. "Josah, he's second year. He can't combat the kind of spells you chant." "But... vhy don't you pair me vith someone who can? In the real vurld, you vould be fighting for either honour or your life. You vouldn't have to vorry about vhether your opponent could deflect your spells or not." The second grader gasps, thinking that Josah is really asking for it(the primary school teachers are all patronising and strict, aside from perhaps a few who are good with children), but Darens shrugs, and calls over a pair of duellers, a finishing third grader and a first grader, and re-pairs them. Josah calls on a fireball again, and launches it at his opponent. The third grader throws up a shield, deflecting it easily, and attacks with a water spell. Josah hits it in mid-air with an ice arrow. _This is more to my liking._ he smirks. Zelgadis and Gemini are fighting with black magic and Zel's bad shamanism. He hates Magic in practice. He sighs as he has to duck Geminis' Bamu Rod instead of being able to deflect it. Why can't he cast magic like the rest of them? He's not even that good at his specialist skills, swordplay. He misses an ice arrow and flies backwards several feet, covered in ice crystals. Darens runs to him and heals him quickly, before hurrying over to a pair of first years who are having problems casting anything at all. "Sorry!!" Cries Gemini "S'ok." He ducks a fireball and throws a flare arrow at her. Much to his happiness, his spell takes effect. Gemini stumbles backwards, her hands over her face trying to get rid of the flash effect in her eyes so that she can see to cast a spell. Zelgadis takes advantage of the extra time and concentrates on a fireball. He does manage a bit of fire, but it is not hot enough to burn her. Her jumps at her to prevent her from hitting him again, and she casts the first spell that come into her mind which happens to be a Bogardic Elm. They are instantly stuck, and spend their time trying to stand up instead of fighting. Darens clears it with a counter spell. They get up and brace themselves to continue, but Darens calls the end of the lesson, and they collect their bags and go.  
  
***  
  
Karis opens a door and peers inside. The room is full of computers and people. This must be IT. She walks in, drops he book bag under the remaining free chair and sits down. She turns to the girl next to her. She has black fluffy hair, short, about neck length, and pretty brown eyes. She is typing amusing phrases on her word processor. "Hey. What's your name?" The girl finishes typing the phrase 'the early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese' and looks up. "What?" "What's your name?" "Eris. Eris Greiwyrds. What's yours?" "Karis Verri. Do you know Zelgadis?" Eris pulled a face. "I live with him. Pity me. Why?" "He's one of my best friends. Best male friend, anyway." "He didn't tell me that he was going out." "Not that kind of friend!" "I was only joking! Geez..." "Okay, okay... So you're his elusive sister. I wanted to meet you." "Do you say that to everyone?" "Only elusive sisters." Eris laughs. "I'm only elusive because I'm working career experience at this one new lab that needs staff." "You're a scientist?" "Genetics, yeah. Biomorphogenetics, and copy genetics. Wormy department." "Could you tell me what you do in English please?" "Oh, right. Biomorphogenetics is basically changing what something is by mucking around with it's genes. So bio, as in biology... like, natural things, in this case 'not machines', morpho, morph, to change, and genetics as in genetics. And copy genetics is not hard to work out." "Oh yeah?" Eris laughs again. She seems to find Karis very amusing. "Human cloning in a couple of words." "Human cloning? Cool!" Eris smirks. Karis opens her mouth to say more, but then their teacher, Sari Brynzeel, walks in. "Hello Everybody!" "Good afternoon Sir." Sari staggers theatrically. "Please! I was going to say, don't call me Sir, Mister, Mister Brynzeel, Sensei, Teacher, Help, or anything else. Just so that you know, my name is Sari so please call me that. I will come rushing to your aid. And also, please not 'good afternoon' or good morning' or anything. Just hello or hi will do. Right. Tradition calls upon me to take the register. Okay, third year, that's Fifteen year olds, come first. Call out your names and I'll tick them off on my golden list here." "Haroshi." "Holly." "Geraldine." "Max." "Daniel." "Taroka." "Shadrak.""Libby." "Karis." "Hugo." "Hans." "Great. You're all here. No stragglers, praise the timetables. Fourth and final years now." "Angus." "Catherine." "Sumitha." "Eris." "Alex." "Josiah." "Edith." "Hannah." "Mildred." "Karl." "Ranjit." "Goraki." "Incredible. Nobody is actually late... Okay. IT, Information Technology for those who don't know. In a word, computers. What we're going to do as a start of term thing is installing, uninstalling and crashing. I'm going to hand out these CDs, all of them copies as you can see, I made them myself, once you have done installing it then call me and I'll tell you if you did it right. Then you must uninstall it and rerun it so that you know that you've erased it. Then I will crash your computer for you and you are going to un-crash it. by that time the lesson should be over." He goes around handing out the CDs. Karis takes hers and puts it in the drive. Eris winks at her. "You know what you're doing?" Karis is still under the table. "I should think so. I can put a CD in a drive." She straightens up and clicks on the My Computer icon. The CD is there, waiting to be run. She double clicks on it in and hits install. The installation popup window flashes on to the screen. Karis works her way through the questions, skims through the terms of agreement and clicks install. The information begins to transfer. She taps the boy on her left, Max, and mutters "You don't have to read the terms of agreement. There's nothing there. Never is." Max ignores her. She shrugs and goes back to her screen where the CD has finished installing. She puts up her hand. "Sari? I've loaded the CD." She is the third person who has finished loading the CD. Not taking her eyes of the screen, Eris calls out "I finished too. Check me up next." Sari saunters over to Karis' monitor, clicks on the desktop item and checks it over. "Well done. You've installed it properly. Let's see you, Eris... No need to though, really. You always get it right." He checks up on Eris' work, nodds in approval, and hurries over to the next student.  
  
***  
  
Later that night, Karis is in her room listening to her Queen CD and reading her new copy of Fushigi Yuugi. Josah calls to her from downstairs. "Karis! Phone for you!" Karis bookmarks her page and picks up the cordless next to her bed. "Hel-lo?" "Karis! Thank goodness you're in! (Josah hangs up) It's Eris. I've called to tell you, something dreadful's happned to Zelgadis!" Karis raised her eyebrows subconsciously and turned off her music. "What? What is it?" Eris sounded distressed. "Oh, it's so awful! He ran out of the house about a minute ago, and he's all blue and it looks like he's got pebbles grown on his face, and he said that you're the only person who can help him! He's gone south, in a white car, a Chevrolet, I hope you can find him! Can you drive?" Karis frowned in confusion. "No, I can't drive. But... I had a talk with Sari at the end of the lesson, and he's a really nice guy. I know where he lives, I'll take the bus and I'm sure he'll give us a ride down wherever it is that Zel has gone." "Oh, thank you so much! It's just, I'd go after him but I don't know anyone in the legal age group who can afford a car and you were the first person I though of!" "No problemo, Eris-chan! I'll be right after him!" Karis hung up, jumped of her bed and skidded downstairs as though the hounds of hell were after her. "Josah! Josah! Zel's gone barmy and we've got to chase him! we're taking the bus down to Sari's house, I'm sure he'll take us!" Josah began to ask a question, but Karis had already grabbed his wrist and pulled him out of the door. Back at her grandfathers mansion house, Eris turned from the phone to address Rezo. "Grandfather?" Rezo didn't look up from the book he was 'reading'. "Yes?" Eris smirked a demonic little smile and wafted over to him. "It worked. They're taking Sari and going after him. Is the portal ready?" Rezo closed the book and straightened up. "The portal is ready, Eris-chan. It will work." Eris smiled and looked up at the tall man. "Oh Rezo-sama, I never doubted that it would work." They laughed a little, and retired to their respective rooms.  
  
***  
  
And so does Blue River end. But the next chapter, Shadows on the Moon, will hold greater dangers for Sari, Josah, Zel, and ultimately Karis as she strives to learn the greatest secret kept from her. 


End file.
